The Tamesis
Gwen Van Den Eijnde, chair of the fashion design department at the Rhode Island School of Design, roughly categorized the collections from the 12 students in the Class of 2026 as “eclectic”—and that’s exactly what it is. Although the students’ work is distinctly individual, one thing all the talented individuals have in common is a passion for materials – whether it’s a yoga mat, a wasp’s nest, a sugar bag, or even the humble muslin. Through crafts and unusual “things,” students are able to use them to address personal and profound themes, often in fantastic ways. Van den Eijnde revealed that another benefit of “getting students to really engage with the hand and hand processes and really transform the textiles” is that it acts as a “resistance to artificial intelligence”.
Take, for example, the work of Azaria Van Der Stok-Smallwood and Paige Sias, both 2026 Virgil Abloh “postmodern” scholars whose work centers the experience of black women. Responding to the possible betrayal of silence, Van Der Stock-Smallwood combined oyster shells and hand-collected reeds to create dramatic, expressive silhouettes. She uses thousands of strips of raffia-like fabric to create garments of opulent volume and undulating movement, proving that her designs are tied to history and “take on a life of their own.” Or, as she writes: “Clothing became my site of liberation and resistance.”
Paige Sias’s collection stems from her own family’s history as it relates to ” [sugar] Cane,” in which “work becomes the path to freedom. ” Sias applies time-tested and time-intensive craftsmanship to humble materials, such as adding corset details to denim (traditionally a workwear fabric) and cutting marshmallow bags into outerwear. Elsewhere, Sias transformed burlap coffee bags into miniskirts and cobbled together scraps of discarded wedding dresses to create a shimmering white cutout dress that could be read as tangible proof of her commitment to “design as a form of activism.”
“I feel a responsibility to use my work to create space for others,” writes Nerukessa Burgess, a trans-Jamaican American who was clearly thinking beyond her own while creating the collection of essays. Burgess referenced the colors and movement of the island nation’s Olympic uniforms and its flag, creating appeal through cutouts and dramatic shoulder treatments. The result is, in their own words, “a fusion of drag culture and beach culture.”
It makes perfect sense that designer Zoe Goldemberg interned with New York’s tireless iconoclasts ThreeASFOUR, given their philosophical (if not aesthetic) similarities. Goldenberg’s work explores uncharted territory through a series of experimental collections that use science and digital technology to investigate function through materiality. For example, a one-piece sweater is covered with hydraulic tubes through which purple water can flow, creating “a cooling and regulating circulation system.” Designers also built an undulating edifice from strips of yoga mats tied together by uninflated balloons (department chiefs likened it to the Buckminster Fuller Dome). Many of Goldenmber’s costumes are reminiscent of exoskeletons.
For the Class of 2026, chaos is a given. What’s interesting is the way they chose to solve this problem. Adjustable corset lacing is a method of body containment that appears in almost every collection, including that of Liam St.Clair-Rounds. The designer grew up in a small mountain town and was fascinated by the dark vastness of the night sky. Its mysterious vastness seemed to convince him that “because nothing is truly unfathomable, everything is conceivable.” He dreams of designing clothing for beings from the other side using earthly materials like tape and copper foil. The surface texture of an open-knit dress embellished with string of pearls and abalone bead pendants had a lunar feel.
Micaela Giulianelli’s work had a darker mood, as she had her models’ faces covered in chiffon. Her thesis is about the negotiation between femininity and the need for protection of the female body. By heat-pressing garbage bags onto chiffon, the designers created an organic skeletal landscape on the dress’s surface; seams, painted and printed fabrics evoked veins and blood. Giulianelli wrote of her designs, “Beauty and menace are inseparable.”
Even more interesting is the collection of Maya Mary Muravlev and Ji Hu Park. Muravlev plays with the touted fashion ideal of unfulfilled glamor through the concept of rummaging through bags in search of a hidden lighter or elusive key. She embodied this idea by incorporating a clutch into the bodice of the opening look and giving some of the fabric a burn treatment. Plastic coffee lids are embedded in cotton, and trompe l’oeil prints—wine stains, chipped nails, etc.—underline her embrace of perfect imperfection, which she describes as “a reflection on the traces left by everyday life.” Park, who named her collection “Made by a Magpie” and describes herself on Instagram as an “illustrator turned seamstress,” presented looks that unabashedly celebrated pink and green, princesses (and princes) and beauty. Think bubble skirts, pin-pleated heart-shaped bodices and quilted petal skirts. Park’s idea was “Everything should be prettier. Everything should be brighter.”
Mariam Devadze’s series begins with the renovation of her grandparents’ house in Georgia. The designer considers clothes as objects and their relationship to the body, referencing the interior world. She made a knitwear piece that looked like a rolled-up rug, and printed wallpaper pants that looked like they were peeling off the body. The designer’s attention to the detailed construction of the garments reflected this theme less directly. Her opening tweed look featured a jacket “made” upside down, embellished with nuts and bolts. “I found the structure very powerful and I tried to find poetry in it,” she writes. “Trying to leave room for curiosity in something that seems like a conclusion.” Many imitated Miguel Adrover’s reverse-wear trench coat; Decaz raised her game, even though it wasn’t her original intention. She packed a garment bag in her coat and stumbled upon a plaid shirt, which she hung so it could be seen through the transparent front; deciding on the back-to-front orientation only after the piece was complete.
Head of costume design Van Den Eijnde described many of the collections as having a romantic quality, with a love of history and craftsmanship observed in pieces by Cali Kircher, Ellia Baldwin and Day Koo. Notably, New York’s influence is very active in Providence—both Kitcher and Baldwin studied with Zoe Whalen when she taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Ellia Baldwin’s series, titled Women in Trees, considers the body in relation to the untamable natural world. “Chaos lends itself to balance and justice because the elements are in a constant state of flux,” Baldwin writes. “Embracing chaos is naturally all about equilibrium. That’s the rhythm I’m attuned to.” The designer placed wasp nests she collected locally under tulle on a jacket made from plaster casts of live models. Another garment is aged through a fumigation technique. The branches that make up the stunning nest-like neckpiece also inspired a wooden jacquard fabric that Baldwin created in collaboration with classmates in the textile design department.
Kitcher organized her thesis around the ritual of dinner, turning imaginary detritus—eggshells, wax paper—into charming accessories and using organic materials as sourced from the earth as food. Kircher’s attachment to history and its traces, expressed in exposed structures (a superb example of which is a wool blazer with red quilted stitching and internal pockets with gathered detailing), was linked to her desire to preserve the wonder or innocence of childhood, while, she writes, addressing “the pressures of growing older and entering a world that demands we step away from our whims.” This quality is reflected in a small collar that forms a bustle at the back of another topper and crowns the neckline with a final hand-stitched tea-dyed look. Who knew a tablecloth could inspire such poetry?
Gude uses her work to explore her relationship with her beloved grandmother. Old photographs were incorporated into the prints, but more importantly, the way they aged and colored inspired designers to explore new ways of dying and treating fabrics to capture the look and feel of relics from the past. Koo writes that her silhouettes “embody the tenderness of my emotions,” and that she prefers simple shapes that don’t distract from detail, which she feels “adds intention and narrative.” For example, muslin and printed organza are combined like mist in the form of a shift dress. Ivory T-shaped coat is made from continuous strips of loose linen; it took 90 hours to make. Koo’s future will include further exploration of the past; she will return to South Korea to study ancient arts Ganyansak, Persimmon is dying
